West Oakland

On Wednesday this week heavily armed FBI and Bay Area police deployed in four East Bay locations, most heavily in West Oakland’s Acorn Housing Projects, where they engaged in multiple simultaneous raids of residences. Neither residents nor local media were given an immediate explanation but at 1:00 A.M. OPD issued a press release. It said that over 120 OPD officers had joined 150 FBI agents from all over the country and the San Leandro, Hayward, and Antioch police departments, and that they had entered residences with warrants and made five arrests, seized four firearms, and confiscated narcotics.

Community activist and Bikes 4 Life bike shop owner Tony Coleman, his neighbors, and the staff of the bike shop, held their third annual barbecue and holiday bike giveaway outside the shop on 7th Street in West Oakland, and remembered Baby Hiram, a child the neighborhood lost last year to gun violence.